


Hair Like a Flicker of Flame

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst?, Bittersweet, Don't Kill Me, F/M, I AM SORRY, I'm Sorry, OH ALSO Dany is sort of mad queen here, Slowish burn?, don't hate me, idk?, smut tho, so there's that, typical JP fluff it ain't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 10:41:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14235525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: Jon Targaryen lead the North against the dead and slayed the Night's King but died of his wounds, leaving Sansa, his heir, as Queen in the North. During this time, Daenerys invaded KL and sacked it, eradicating the Lannisters), and then road North. Given her past treatment from other kings and queens, and given how the North wants nothing to do with the South or this Dragon Queen who ignored their plight, Sansa rode against the Targaryen forces, but it didn't go well with her fatigued troops.Meanwhile, Sandor Clegane is there, ever by her side, ever since she had him swear an oath as her sworn shield.Sandor is canon age from the books (soz Rory), and Sansa is aged to 18/19.Picset





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarahcakes613](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahcakes613/gifts), [bex_xo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bex_xo/gifts), [SassyEggs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassyEggs/gifts), [vanillacoconuts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillacoconuts/gifts).



“We just need time to think,” Sandor says, his voice a grate like the wind that scrapes so relentlessly against the canvas walls of her enormous tent, his voice a wake as he paces behind her.

“We have had time to think, and to plot, and to plan,” Sansa snaps. “And look at what good that has done us.”

She hugs herself and strides with a swish of woolen skirts across frostbitten grass that has been haphazardly covered with a few travel-dusty rugs. They would better befit a mule’s back than to soften the tread of a Queen’s steps. But such is life for the Queen in the North, these days.

They have just gotten word via panting, breathless, wounded messenger that the Mother of Dragons has just broken through the North’s vanguard, and with that word he has also brought a chill to this makeshift study and chamber that has nothing to do with the wind-whip and the whirls of snow that race across the land just outside that tent flap. No matter that it’s for the most part warm in here, dark with the flickers from braziers and a few tapers on a hastily set up table. Maps and charts and the little figures on them, typically used for cyvasse until moments like these.

Then they are used for war.

Sansa lets go over her middle and chafes her hands. Cold from bad tidings. Cold from fear. Cold from  _anger._

“Your Grace, please,” Sandor says, but it’s not the pleading that shocks her out of the jumble and tumble of her thoughts. No.

Sansa spins around on her heel so quickly that it catches even her agile sworn shield off guard, and he is forced to brace her shoulders with his large hands lest they collide. She allows the touch, familiar as they are with one another, and that’s precisely the reason he caught  _her_ off guard with the formality of her title. He is all fret and frown and furrow, here where the torch- and candlelight paint each nook and cranny of his weather-beaten, scarred face in a contrast of warm light and cold shadow.

“Do not call me that, not here when we are alone,” she says with a sigh.

“We are surrounded by your bannermen and the enemy besides,” he gruffs. “It would do well to maintain formality in such a position.”

“I care not for it, not when my mind reels so. You throw me off my footing, Sandor. Make me feel I am not with the only one I trust out here, to call me ‘Your Grace,’” she says, and she lifts a hand within the enclosed space his arms provide, pinches the bridge of her nose with a sad wince. “Especially considering how unlucky the first two Kings in the North were to be so called.”

“My lady, then?”

Voice a touch softer, a touch quieter, as if the wind does not provide all the cover they need for candid conversation.

She smiles with a roll of her eyes, a touch of Arya that her mother would scold. So much of her family has died in other men’s wars. She prays to The Seven that she can keep the rest of them alive in her own battle; a sister and two brothers, such a small surviving party when once they stood eight.  _We are five strong if I count him, though,_ she says as she gazes up at her shield, who still has her by the shoulders in a gesture he has clearly forgotten though she has not. Not one to be outdone, she offers a touch of her own, though this comes by way of a light  _thwack_ of her palm to his leather-bound chest, which makes him huff, makes him release her to her untethered thoughts.

“Very well,  _Sansa,_ ” he says. Chiding. Exasperated. Amused, too, and that serves to stave off some of her temper, a bit.

She smiles again, a fleeting thing, before it fades, and she shakes her head and chews on her lip.

“I do not know what to do, Sandor,” she murmurs, and if it were anyone else but him here, she would chastise herself for sounding so meek. “Our forces are still reeling from defeating the dead. Food is scarce, and the horses are thin. They don’t follow me as- as fiercely as they followed Jon, and I’ve heard rumors, I’ve heard whispers that they’d rather follow  _her,_ since she defeated the Lannisters.”

“Sansa,” Sandor says, folding his arms across his chest like he is about to scold a child.

“What,” she says testily, folding her arms in mirror of him and standing as straight as she can.

“These are men who saw their king die,” he says far more gently than his stance and his frown would suggest possible.

“But he won! He vanquished the Night’s King and had named me his heir afterwards,” she says of Jon on his death bed, and now she does sound the child here; she only need stamp her foot and pout and the transformation would be complete.

“They call you Queen, and they have followed you from what’s left of The Wall down to the Barrowlands to fight yet  _another_ battle. So they reel. And they complain. Any man without a belly full of meat and wine or even a toothless old whore to warm his bed is bound to complain.”

She wrinkles her nose at the earthy imagery.

Sandor laughs, a dark bristly thing, a cave-dwelling creature, a laugh that she has come to crave, even in times like these.  _Especially_ in times like these.

“Ever the maid, eh?”

Still chuckling, Sandor brushes past her towards a trunk by her fur covered straw mattress, leans down to retrieve the small pewter pitcher of lukewarm spiced wine that rests atop it She turns to watch him, the long flex of him that she can see even under three layers and a cloak, muscle and sinew and bone, all put together to make the only man in Westeros that she trusts completely. It makes her heart ache for some reason, even though he just essentially called her a naïve child and she should be calling  _him_ a mannerless old cad. But then, after looking this way and that and coming up short, Sandor shrugs and drinks straight from the pitcher.

Sansa laughs despite herself.

“You are incorrigible,” she says with a smiling sigh.

She goes to the center table strewn with the instruments of schemers, moves a scroll of parchment to reveal the small horn cup she was drinking from earlier, and she drains it of its dregs before taking the pitcher from him and refilling the cup. Sandor nods his thanks when she hands it to him, adds a grunt in there for good measure, and takes a swallow while Sansa hugs the pitcher to her chest and regards him fondly.

These tiny moments are so few and far between these days that she cannot help but soak in the normalcy of it, the mundane and the simplicity of a conversation instead of a plot or plan of action. It is such a far cry to the time they spent in Winterfell before Jon died, after Sansa had descended from The Eyrie only to find Sandor walking the King’s Road towards Winterfell to find _her_.

Instead she had found him, wearing a brother’s robes striding beside his aging horse, all the hate and rage gone, only the man she used to get glimpses of. The conversation was far more stilted then, but they continued all the way back to Sansa’s home, and they wove together his truth and hers, their histories and ill-forgotten pasts, and when Sandor acquired himself another sword he asked if he could stay in Winterfell as a guard, and when Jon was dealt a lingering death blow by the Night’s King, she asked him to be her sworn shield, and he replied  _Aye, Sansa, I will,_ and that was that.

“I have missed this,” she blurts out, maybe from that last swallow of wine, maybe from the sweeter dram of memories she just sipped.

Sandor’s eyebrows raise as he drinks and regards her over the rim of the little cup, wipes his wine-wet mouth with the back of his beaten-leather vambrace.

“Miss what, war? We still have a bit left of it, at least I hope,” he says.

“No, not  _war,_ don’t be daft. I don’t ever want to see another war my lifetime.”

“Aye, that’s me as well,” he says with another dark huff of laughter. “Go on then, what is it then, hmm?” he asks.

“Just, this. Talking like we always used to,” she says, pouring more wine in the cup when Sandor extends it.

Sandor hums, reaches out and gently prizes the pitcher handle from her fingers in order to offer her the refilled cup. Sansa smiles as she takes it.

“I miss that, too,” she murmurs.

“Eh?”

“Niceties. Manners. Sharing a cup of wine instead of trying to wage war.”

“Not wage,” Sandor says with a groan as he eases himself onto a leather-bound stool by the large solar table. “Win.”

“Aye, that,” she says, mocking the graveled timbre and inflection of his speech.

He laughs as he always does when she mimics him, and she chuckles into the cup of wine as she leans her hip against the table next to where he sits, one arm hugging her middle while she rests her other elbow on her wrist, the cup of wine against her chin as she sniffs at it. It is cheap wine and smells it, sour and thin, but it is sometimes the only thing that can help her sleep, determined as she is to keep the milk of the poppy reserved for her injured men.  _Of which there are so many, lately,_ she thinks sadly.  _What am I doing, riding against dragons?_

“We’ll be all right, Sansa,” Sandor says quietly.

When she looks down at him he’s looking up at her intently, the study of a pupil gazing at a book of history. He rests his arm on the table, fingers outstretched towards her before he lowers them, drops his gaze a moment before he looks back up at her.

“We’ll be all right, and we’ll return to Winterfell and have as many bloody boring conversations as you’d like, and instead of tired soldiers ladies in waiting will pour you wine, and you will drink from goblets instead of cups. I know it.”

“Liar,” she whispers with a small smile.

He frowns and glowers at her, a mockup of the ferocious glares he used to give her all those years ago, lifts a finger to point it at her and wag it like a fishwife.

“Watch it, girl,” he growls.

Sansa cannot help but break out into a wide smile.

“I do not, however, miss  _that,_ ” she says before taking a long sip of wine.  _Goblets and ladies,_ she thinks, though she hopes her tired soldier will still be there to keep her company.

“No, neither do I,” he says quietly. A pause, a stammer, and then, “You must know how absolute shit I felt about- how absolute shit I  _feel_ for—”

Sansa sets the cup down and shushes him with her hand atop his. Warm firelight dances on their skin, here where they touch atop a map, like an X of flesh and bone that marks a spot where two people join to become friends.  _However strange it may be, we have joined._

“It doesn’t matter, anymore,” she whispers. “None of it matters anymore, Sandor, nothing but now. Nothing but the future.”

Sandor is stone still, staring at their hands, and it is several moments before he finally inhales a deep breath and sighs out, nods his head a few times before he finally lifts his slate grey gaze to hers. His hand does not move beneath hers. He nods again, once.

“Aye, my lady. The future.”

Sansa opens her mouth to speak, though she knows not what she will even say, and that both thrills and terrifies her, here where he’s warm to the touch and unresisting, here where her thoughts are a mad jumble of feelings.

Not that she need worry.

For in that moment the flap to her tent is thrust aside, and in walks a man in Targaryen armor, black and red and blazoned with a three-headed dragon. Her heart sinks like the pit of a peach to her stomach, and when she moves to lift her hand to her heart, Sandor presses his other hand atop hers.

“The North has fallen, and the Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen has ordered me to bring you before her to negotiate the terms of your surrender.”

When Sandor squeezes her hand, she squeezes back.

 

+++

 

“Very well. However I insist that my sworn shield accompany me; I will not venture onto enemy territory without him.”

She is all regality, all lifted chin and haughty stature that reminds him of the first days when he met her, too good for the rest of them, most of all him. He would crack a smile at the fact that right now she’s demanding his presence when so long ago she used to flee from it. There’s an odd sense of pride, even now as he stands here on a dying battleground.

The Targaryen Queensguard studies the Queen in the North while Sandor studies him, trying to ferret out whether or not this fall of the North is true. Smug and arrogant, spine straight and full of piss and vinegar, the cunt. All signs pointing to the North’s defeat. Not a dying battlefield then, but a dead one, just as this arse stated.

“It is of no matter if you bring him; the Queen is well protected; I am not the only member of  _her_ guard. Bring your ‘shield,’ if you so desire,” the guardsman replies with an amused shrug before giving Sandor a derisive glance. “The Queen will find it very quaint.”

The imperious look on Sansa’s face flickers a moment, and in that moment, Sandor can see her youth and her fear, and he winces inwardly.

 _Damn it Sansa,_ he thinks.  _You should have called me your Queensguard to put yourself on her level._ But the damage is done, at least in the eyes of this Targaryen soldier, and he’s sure to whisper to his Dragon bitch that the Queen in the North and her court are no more than a young woman and the tired fool playing a mummer’s game.

They are like two moths being ousted from their cocoon once they step outside of the warmth and security of Sansa’s tent, their clothes and her skirts flapping like tattered wings in the wind, all feeble sense of security rushing away like a branch down a raging river. Sandor feels the bite and burn of the cold all the more acutely on the scarred side of his face, and small stinging flakes of snow catch on his eyelashes, blur his vision.

He squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head to briefly face downwind in order to find his bearings, it is that dizzying out here from the weather. Dusk is settling, and it only serves to muzzy up their surroundings even more, that sooty time of day when everything blurs and blends. Sansa, small thing that she is, anchors him when she slides her ungloved hand between the trunk of his body and his right elbow, and instinctively he bends his arm to carry the weight of her.

“Her Highness the Queen is this way,” the Queensguard says, or rather shouts, considering the surrounding racket of soldiers and weaponry, the whickers and neighs of horses, and that reminds Sandor.

“Stop, you,” he barks to the Queensguard, who looks mildly affronted at being so addressed by, Sandor assumes, someone he considers a prisoner. Sandor ignores him and turns to Sansa,  _his_ true Queen. “Let me fetch Stranger; you’ve been around him plenty now, and he’s calmed with age. You shouldn’t approach her on foot like some commoner. Show her you are above the rest of us.”

She chews on her lip, a habit that has increased these past several days, but then she nods.

“Yes, all right; you’ve the right of it. I must maintain the illusion.”

“It is no bloody illusion, San- Your Grace,” he self-corrects before stalking off to his smaller tent behind hers, where Stranger is tethered.

“So you say,” she calls over her shoulder before she turns around to, he hopes, glare daggers at the Queensguard; the old gods and the new know just as well as he how good she is at it.

He himself takes the reins once he’s helped her into the saddle, watches as she sits astride and then arranges her skirts to hide the coarse long pants she wears underneath her dress, ever the lady. Lady Wolf, he calls her in his private thoughts, where his imagination and fantasies run dark and deep and wild, ripe fruit for the plucking whenever he’s alone. Little Bird she isn’t, not anymore. No more than he is The Hound.

She is his Queen, and he her shield.

“It isn’t wise to make the Mother of Dragons wait,” the Queensguard says.

“I’m sure she’ll keep,” Sandor mutters, more of a growl than anything, just under his breath, but still Sansa shushes him.

“Careful, my lord,” she says. “We still do not know what to expect.”

The Queensguard gestures they follow and follow they do, Sandor’s hand on Stranger’s neck as they plod through groaning men and kicked over campfires.

“Oh aye? You think it’s for bread and honey and to exchange tidings and woman’s gossip? You are being brought before your foe who, it appears, is the victor in this mess. We know what to expect, just not how she will receive you. Either graciously,” he says, leaving off the  _like you,_ “or like that mad bitch Cersei.”

“Yes, well,” Sansa says with a nervous little pat to Stranger’s shoulder. “I did learn a thing or two from that mad- that mad  _woman_ Cersei,” she says.

“Thank the Stranger it wasn’t more,” Sandor says darkly.

They are escorted through the camp and across a stretch of lumpy field, no man’s land of muddied snow and ripped up dead grass, and then the battlefield begins. It is a nightmare of casualty, a long wasteland of blood and guts, huge streaks of blackened earth from dragon fire. Sansa gasps and presses her hand to her mouth when they pass two young men torn in two, and she flinches and closes her eyes, turns away from the kind of carnage that hasn’t bothered Sandor since he was a stripling.

The Dragon bitch’s tent is big, bigger than Sansa’s even, and lavishly decorated, Sandor can tell in an instant once they step inside. Rich tapestries and furs, a full-length mirror with real glass, a bed with posts and braziers  _everywhere._ There is clearly no hesitancy to display power with  _this_ Queen as there is with his, humbled as Sansa has become throughout the course of her troubled life.  _The future,_ he thinks.  _Hold fast, my lady, and we will get through this._

“You must be Lady Stark,” Daenerys says once the flap has been closed.

Clearly, this Queen came prepared for victory, as she sits on a small but ornate throne in the back of the tent between her – presumably feather – bed and a writing desk. She, her seven guards, and Sansa and he are ensconced in bright crackling warmth, and the black walls of her tent give the illusion that they are in the fiery belly of one of her terrible beasts. But this Queen is all silver to Sansa’s red, ice and reserve to the warmth and the kindness that he has come to finally understand, to finally enjoy. Such contrasts, with these two Queens.

“It’s ‘Your Grace,’ uh, Your Grace,” Sandor interjects, ending somewhat lamely though he meant it to be sharp and brittle.

Without so much as tilting her head towards him, Daenerys flicks her gaze to him, arches a fine silver brow at his nerve. She closes her eyes and when she opens them again she looks dead on to Sansa, pinning her in place the way Joffrey used to, back at the start, from atop his own throne. Sandor sends up a thanks to the Stranger that at the very least they have not been dragged back to King’s Landing. He’d kill as many men as it took, to keep her from that festering pile of shit for the rest of her days.

“We do not recognize the North as its own sovereign land,” she states, voice slow and low and deep, the steady voice of command. “But one of the Seven Kingdoms, and rightfully ruled by House Targaryen. So Lady Stark it is.”

“As you say,” Sansa replies coolly, hands clasped lightly in front of her.

One could call her drab here amongst all this finery, standing in muted blue wool that once belonged to her mother, her hair mostly undone save for two braids that keep it out of her face. Daenerys, in comparison, has her hair more intricately coiled than any of Cersei’s whores and ladies managed, and she wears black furs so glossy they shine. But to Sandor there is no comparison. There is a quiet dignity to his Queen that makes him proud to stand at her side.

The Mother of Dragons narrows her eyes slightly but lets the lukewarm tone of her rival slip, at least this time. She inhales and breathes it out though her nose as she shifts in her chair and gestures towards Sansa.

“Nevertheless, you fashioned yourself as Queen in the North and raised your banners against me,” she says. “What were you thinking, undertaking such foolishness?”

If it’s even possible, Sansa straightens her spine even more, as tall and regal as a statue.

“I was heir to rule the North, as stated by my cousin, King Jon Targaryen. Your nephew,” she adds as an afterthought.

If she thinks it will add weight to her words, this relation, however, she is mistaken. Daenerys merely waves her hand in the air, as if she’s ridding herself of a fly.

“A silly thing to do since the North belongs to  _me_. I did not usurp a throne like Robert Baratheon but was  _born_ to rule. Jon cannot give away what does not belong to him. I never met him, this apparent nephew of mine. but he sounds like a boy, playing with toy soldiers, calling himself King.” Daenerys leans forward slightly. “Just because you call yourself a thing does not  _make_  you that thing, Lady Stark,” she says.

Sandor glances sidelong to Sansa and notices the sudden clench of her jaw. The desire to reach out and grasp her hand, to lace his fingers with hers, is almost palpable. Something to feast on.

“The North wants nothing to do with the South, Your Grace,” Sansa says. “And after we defeated the dead at The Wall with only ourselves to thank, while you stormed King’s Landing and took the realm for yourself, we believed, and still do believe, that we have earned to right to self-govern. You claimed the Iron Throne, it’s true, but we saved the entire realm. Does that not earn us the right to excuse ourselves from the trials and tribulations of the South?”

It is the wrong move, Sandor can see in an instant, though her words rally a sense of pride in him for being a part of that particular victory. But Daenerys is clearly offended to be so dressed down, to be judged as smaller minded than her Northern rival.

“While I do thank you for your service to the throne, nay, the  _realm,_ ” she says icily, bitterly, “you have no just cause to play a mummer’s Queen and you have no right to take what is mine by rights. This little game of yours ends, and it ends tonight.”

There are heated words now, heated declarations of two angry women, and while Sandor does not reach out for her as a lover might, fingers entwined like the secret part of him so desperately wants, he does edge closer and rest a hand on Sansa’s shoulder when she threatens to rally another force of troops.

“Careful, Your Grace,” he whispers.

Daenerys claps eyes on him at that.

“You’d do well to listen to your – what is he, your  _shield? –_ He has the right of it. Wherever is your Hand? This moment is when you need counsel most.”

Sansa explains that young Bran, distant as he is, serves as both her interim Hand and Lord of Winterfell, though she leaves out the fact that he has been stuck in his three-eyed trance since before they even returned from The Vale. But she does explain his absence through the fact that Jaime Lannister crippled him.

“Well, we do not need to worry about Lannisters anymore, as we have taken extreme care to settle that dispute. What we would like to know now is do we need to worry about the Starks?”

Even Sandor has to admit it is a powerful way to sum up the conversation.

He turns to face Sansa in full and she does so in kind, trepidation and worry swimming like fish in the Tully blue of her eyes, and he’s glad he has not moved his hand from her shoulder. Imperceivably, or at least he hopes, he gives it a squeeze for fortitude, for commiseration, for courage.

“What would you have me do,” she says in a whisper softer than a dove’s wing, almost inaudible due to its gauziness.

“It is not for me to say. I am no King,” he murmurs back. “Definitely no Queen.”

“Evidently I am not, either,” she says in bitter, hushed tones.

“You are to the North,” he shoots back.

Sansa chews on her lip again, less a Queen in this moment than a lost young woman.

A pause, a beat, the stretch of one thousand years as he tries to put as much as he can into his next words.

“And you most certainly are to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

“It was the right thing to do,” Sandor tells her an hour later.

They are back in her tent and she is back to pacing, though this time Sandor has opted for the stool and the wine again instead of shadowing her to and fro across the dusty rugs.

She shakes her head, so vehemently it tosses her hair. Pauses when she passes him to deftly take the cup of wine from his hand. Drains it in two deep swallows, earning herself a surly look that she cares not a whit for. Continues her pacing while Sandor snatches back the cup, mutters and refills it.

“It was cowardly,” she says, and she scrubs her face with her hands as if she’s trying to rub wisdom into her head through her skin. “I feel I have let my people down. The entirety of the North fought just now, lost  _lives_ just now, and for what? To surrender?”

“They fought for a conclusion and they got one, and now those men can go back to their women and children, can drop the sword and shield and pick up the plow. Life can return. And  _you,_ ”he says, snagging her by the wrist when she paces past him again, and he gives her a tug to get her attention.

Get it he does. She stops, snared as she is, for some reason loving it, to feel the firm warm grip of his fingers round the narrow pale of her wrist. The pounding of her heart suddenly outdoes the loudest war drum, and war drums she knows very well by now. For a moment she forgets what they are talking about until she closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“What about me?”

“You don’t have to rule anymore. You don’t have to worry. You can be Lady of Winterfell as you were meant to be. No more dealing with the horseshit of making laws and enforcing them, no more anxiety.”

The drop of her wrist, though his fingertips trail inside the curl of her palm before his hand falls limply to his cocked-out thigh. Wordlessly, and because she cannot help herself, Sansa lifts her hand and rubs her wrist as if he has seared her flesh. Maybe he has?

“Unless you  _want_ to be Queen?” he murmurs.

“I want the North to be free. I want to maintain Robb and Jon’s legacies. I want my people to be proud.”

“I’ve not met many prouder folk than you Northern lot,” Sandor says dryly.

Sansa huffs an exasperated laugh, drops her wrist and looks about for the other stool.

“Here,” he says, heaving himself to his feet, taking her by the shoulders and turning her in an awkward little shuffle of a dance so that she stands in front of his stool. “Sit,” he says again, applying the smallest pressure so that she sinks instantly onto the seat.

She smiles, watches him root around the tent until he finds the stool under a pile of her clothes at the foot of her bed, and he dumps them unceremoniously on the furs before coming to sit before her.

“Too bad you thought of two stools and yet just a single cup,” he says with a gesture to it there on the table between them.

“Yes,” she says, still smiling. “It’s too bad.”

“Now, tell me, Lady Wolf, and tell me true, for I’ll not have a liar for my liege.”

“Lady Wolf?” Her eyebrows are likely in her hair, they shoot up so quickly and so high.

“Don’t change the subject,” he gruffs. “Tell me,  _Sansa_ , do you want to be Queen?”

 _I want to be your Queen,_ she wants to say, because of how wonderful she felt in Daenerys’s camp when he told her that.  _I want to be your Queen,_ she wants to say, because of how strangely wonderful it’s been here with him amidst all this misery, here where he counsels her and listens to her. But then there are the other things that make her want to be Queen in the North. Her people. Her family. Her firm belief that with time and experience, she can rule it far better than some Southron Queen from a foreign land, than some Targaryen who uses dragons to lord fear over her people.

Sansa nods.

“Yes, yes I want to be Queen.”

“Ah. Well, then.”

He leans towards her in a hunch, forearms braced on his thighs, head hung so that his long black hair hides his face from view. Gods, how much he has sacrificed for her, how devoted he has become to her cause.

Maybe it is because they have gotten so close, so familiar in the cramped quarters an encampment forces upon folk, or because tonight they have reached out for one another far more than they have at all in the past.

Maybe it is because defeat and surrender require a little more comfort than constant, dogged determination. Whatever it is, when he finally looks back up at her, Sansa’s hand is in a hover halfway to him so that she can brush the hair out of his eyes.

Hastily she drops her hand in her skirted lap, snatches it with the other as if to keep it from acting on its own.

Sandor snorts, eyes a heavy roam down to where her hands are clasped.

“Well then, what?” she whispers.

His gaze meets hers, and it warms the longer they look at one another, until finally he grunts and shrugs, pushes himself off his own legs to sit up straight. Another shrug.

“We only pretend to surrender, Your Grace.”

Sansa blinks at him. High stakes lies and courtly games of intrigue have never been anywhere close to a list of his interests, and when she tells him as much he only shrugs again.

“I swore myself to you, Sansa, when you first became Queen in the North. If keeping your crown means I help you with a little deception, then so bloody be it,” he says with the spread of his hands. “That woman was a right cunt to you, besides.”

“Tomorrow Daenerys wants to strip me of my title as Queen of the North and name me Warden of the North.”

“Yes.”

His voice is heavy like a stone as he affirms it. Sansa remembers an altogether different time she was before a ruler and was stripped of her dignities. Sandor seems to be thinking the same thing, given the way he is looking at her now. Pained. Just as she feels now to be so cornered after all they have done for Winterfell and for the North in general.

“She will then have me to bend the knee tomorrow in front of my men and swear fealty.”

Humiliation. Fear. These things she knows all too well, and to be forced to suffer through them all over again at the hands of yet another highborn House sits very ill with her.

“Aye, and so you will. And then we will find a way to take back the North for you and your heirs.”

Sansa frowns. That sounds terribly similar to arranged marriages, and she’d rather live her life just as she is now than travel down that cruel and unhappy road, no matter _what_ her mother used to say. And there is that sad, resigned look on Sandor’s face to mention it. And _that_ sits both ill and very, _very_ fine with her. More of that pounding of her heart that seems to happen so frequently around him these days.

“Sandor, I—”

“No matter how long it takes, we will get your throne. And until then, let the Northern folk whisper and murmur about their rightful Queen. No matter you bend the knee now.”

There is a mountain of worry heaped on her heart, but then she thinks of all she has gone through, all she has suffered thanks to other Kings and Queens. The opportunity to not only govern herself but to rule her people is an extremely enticing one. A comforting one at that; his talk of shedding responsibilities earlier was tempting, but there is security in ruling for yourself. Emboldened by Sandor and her past and her own gumption that has kept her alive through all myriad of threats and challenges, Sansa sits up a little straighter, runs her fingers through her hair, and nods.

“I will take back the North and I will keep it. I know not how, only that I _will._ ”

Sandor grins, an open, hungry thing, and though it tugs on his scars and likely hurts, it does not waver. By the gods, but how’s grown so used to him and to them. It would be an ugly day, not to have them around.

“So be it, Your Grace.”

She scoffs and swats his wrist, still remembering the feel of his hand round hers.

There is a sudden commotion at the entrance of her tent, and just like that Sandor leaps to his feet, yanks her to hers, and positions her behind the muscled bulk of him. Once bitten, it would seem, is twice shy, even for a big man such as he.

But it is no Targaryen, simply one of the serving boys that came along with her whittled down traveling household, here with his arms full of small logs for the braziers, she sees once she peers around Sandor’s frame. Sandor’s face must be furious to be so interrupted, the youth’s expression is that filled with terror.

“Apologies, Y-Y-Your Grace,” he squeaks out as two of the skinny branches tumble out of his arms.

“Ever heard of knocking?” Sandor snarls out, clearly embarrassed to have been so startled.

The boy blanches, looks green around the gills, and looks like he’s trying desperately not to soil himself.

“I-I didn’t know how to knock on a tent, my lord.”

Sansa bursts out laughing at such a silly and innocent rebuttal, it is just that fine a thing to have some merriment tonight. Her reaction startled the young man even further, so much so that the rest of the wood goes tumbling to the ground. He immediately drops to the floor to pick them up, but Sansa gently shoos him out of the tent, promising him he’s not in trouble when he stammers more apologies and drops another branch.

“You,” she says to Sandor once the tent is shut, pointing one bough at Sandor while she juggles the rest of them in the crook of her other arm. “You are still half the brute you once were, you know.”

“And you! You a Queen, picking up kindling like some kitchen girl,” he says, striding past the solar table. He deftly snatches the one she had aimed at him like a sword. “Here, give the rest to me.”

She twists her body, cradling the firewood like an infant to her chest. He tries to snake a hand round her shoulder but while he can anticipate moves on a battle field, fighting with a woman over kindling is not, apparently, something he’s used to. Sansa ducks under his arm and hurries to one of the brazier, dropping two boughs inside before scampering around the far side of the round solar table towards the other brazier.

“If I am your Queen then you must let me do as I please.”

“Oh well done, Your Grace,” Sandor says, all exasperation as he feints left to follow her before darting right to block her off in front of the other brazier. “Now give. Me. That. Wood.”

“It is mine by rights,” she laughs, squeezing them tight to her body as he tries to wrest them away. “Only the Seven know why people keep trying to take things from me tonight.”

“Because,” he grunts as he tugs on one of her arms in another attempt, “you are acting like a fool.”

“You are the one who does not much like fire, so perhaps _you_ are the fool, Sandor Clegane,” she quips, turning around to present him with her back.

“Woman, I swear,” he growls.

He manages to get a hand over her shoulder at last, but it is too close to the curve of her body to snare a stick of wood and instead his palm slides into place, warm and firm, right over her left breast, his thieving reflexes already causing his hand to squeeze his prize.

Instantly, they both freeze.

 

+++

 

As if he has grabbed hold of that fire she just mentioned, Sandor releases her breast in an instant, sucks in a breath of shock and mortification as he staggers back from her.

Sansa’s head is slightly bowed, as if she stares at the offended body part, her hair a sheen of candlelit red, hair a long soft flicker of flame, and she does not move for many moments. Sandor himself glances down at the _offending_ body part, his left hand that is cupped as if it still holds the warm weight of her, and damn him if he hadn’t squeezed it, for fuck’s sake.

Slowly she lifts her head and turns it to look at him over her shoulder, and he stares at her in a sort of muted, bewildered horror. There is a high blush there on the one cheek he can see, and she is so flushed from what he assumes is embarrassment that he can see it even in this low half-light. The coarse words he used to use with her, the rough way he used to treat her as a mere child all swim up in his memory. He thinks of Gregor and curses himself. But then she turns as if to confront him, the firewood half-forgotten in her sagging arms. She opens her mouth but he beats her to the punch.

“Sansa, my- I am- by the Stranger, I did not mean to grab your- to touch you- to squeeze it,” he finishes weakly, feeling as stupid as that serving boy who startled the hells out of him.

He expects her to fling the wood at him, to demand he leave her makeshift bedchamber at once, but much to his fathomless surprise, she drops the wood at her feet, throws her head back and laughs. Long white throat framed in auburn, both set off by the contrast of her soft blue dress. He stands there, mouth hanging open, and goggles at her cheek.

“’It’, Sandor?” she says, giggling helplessly as she presses her hands to her belly. “Speak you to me of whores, of- of- of bitch Queens and—” here she falters a moment, but recovers well enough, considering what next she says, “and cunt Queens, and you call my breast ‘it’? Gods, but you are the silliest, most contradictory man in all the realm, sometimes.”

He closes his mouth lest she call him a fool again. Not that he isn’t one.

“I only do not want you to think of me like that. Like someone who would treat you like that.” Again, tales of his brother whirl around his head.

“What,” she says slyly, crouching to retrieve the last few pieces of wood. He instantly squats down to help her. “Like a whore? Hmm?”

“No, I didn’t mean to- er, well, yes. I mean, no. Seven hells. _No_ , I didn’t mean to treat you like a whore.”

This time she finally lets him carry the bloody wood himself, and her fingers are light, cool feathers wherever they brush his as she helps to stack the kindling in his hands. Together they stand. Sansa leaves her hands on the last bough here in his hands where her godsdamn tit had once been, and gazes up at him, effectively pinning him place with both her touch and her look. Gods, but it’s suddenly hotter than the sun in this tent.

“You have never treated me in such a manner,” she murmurs. “Everyone else did save you.”

Stripped and beaten, married off and cast away. All her suffering, all the things that he could have prevented. He still wants to punch a stone wall when he thinks of how he abandoned her, time and time again. And then the night of the Blackwater. He shakes his head and opens his mouth to protest.

 “Yes, you tried to, long ago when we were both so very different people. But the you that stands before me now has only treated me the way I’ve wanted all people to treat me. They way I believe I should be treated. I hope you understand me.”

He doesn’t, not really, except for perhaps that she is telling him what meager efforts he has made these past many moons has perhaps started to make up for the abuse he let carry on, for the cruel way he bit into her time and time again down in Kings Landing.

“Now if you don’t mind, I would have these braziers stoked,” she says loftily with the lift of her chin. “Lest you want your Queen to suffer from the cold now, as well.”

Sandor chuckles, but Sandor also hops to. Breasts on the brain, the swish of her hair in his periphery, the scent of her skin and her sweat and her soul, maybe, every time he glances up to see her looking away so he can bring that offending hand to his face an inhale her.

He does his duty, stoking fires and stealing looks outside the tent while she rolls up the scrolls and the messages and the maps that did nothing in the end. Eventually they settle to their nightly tasks, she reading and rereading missives though now they do no good, he cleaning Stranger's tack.

They dine on salted beef and hard cheese, stale bread and one of the last bruised and wrinkled apples she has left in her stores. He knows by now how she adores fine foods and sweets, how lemon anything makes her light up but especially those little treats. Would that he could feed her fine foods. Would that he could bring her home where she belongs.

And he will.

“Sandor?”

It is his name and a wavering, warbling question, here where he stands hours later by the entrance of her tent, the flicker and the flame almost to naught as he makes to head back to his own makeshift dwelling. He turns where she sits on one of her little stools, hands clasped in her lap as they so often are, two white birds nested in wool, in the cradle of her thighs. And there he goes again.

He clears his throat.

“Sansa?”

He turns to her in full, all frown and hulking concern, big stupid oaf that he is.

But then he is struck.

At some point during his nightly rituals: the stoking of fires that he narrows his eyes at; the polishing of blades he will no longer have to use in the meantime; his repeated yanking back of the tent flap so that he can glare outside at any passersby who dare to cross the Queen’s threshold; at some point during all of this she has unbraided her hair, and half of it falls smooth and straight while the other half falls in waves like the sea. Doe-eyed despite the blue, thanks to the low light; earnest and open; undone and unbound with a mattress and a pile of furs just beyond.

He stops to listen, yes, but mostly he stops to stare.

“I’m scared.”

Her words fight through the idiotic muddle of his foggy, filthy thoughts, and his frown deepens.

“Why?”

Shrug and a shake of the head, the spread of her pale hands.

“What if the North despises me, after tomorrow? What if they call me coward, call me duplicitous? What if, after we return home, no one will rally for me like they did for Jon, when he was declared King in the North? What if I return, and I am all alone? The lone Lady of Winterfell, prisoner in her own kingdom, Warden of the North with no one.”

Tears brim in her eyes; the tent is not so large that he cannot see that she is crying, even though he’s on one end and she is on the other. He has seen her cry several times in his lifetime, used to scorn her for it, but here on the night that it has all ended, here where she has been made to surrender under terms not her own, here where she cries not as a child but as a woman grown, a Queen without a throne, here there is real pain and sorrow and loss.

True loss, and Sandor knows far too well what true loss feels like. He lost everything, once.

He’ll not lose it again.

“You’re not alone,” Sandor says.

She rolls her eyes and sniffles, uses the backs of her index fingers to wipe the tears from her lower lashes.

“I know, I have Arya and Rickon, and I suppose I have Bran, too, whatever is left of him here in the present, but I didn’t—”

“I didn’t mean your brothers and sister,” Sandor says quietly.

She’s looking down at her tear-stained fingers, is wiping them carelessly on her dress when he speaks, and she sniffs again before looking back up at him in time to see him slowly abandon the tent entrance to walk towards her. There is the faintest crease in the center of her brow, a frown of confusion, or one of revelation. If he were a godly man this is where he would pray for the latter, because it’s high time he come clean now.

“Oh?”

Soft as a sigh, and maybe it is one.

“Aye. I swore to be by your side, and I’ll not leave you. I’m no knight, I’m barely a lord, I’ve been a dog most of my life. But I am a man of my word.”

“So it’s as a shield that you’ll stay,” she says with a sigh, the frown leaving her as she shakes her head and hauls herself to her feet. “It’s an oath that chains you.”

Sandor huffs incredulously, takes a couple of swift steps towards her, and long as his strides are, they very nearly bring him toe to toe with her.

“For a Queen who has come so far, you are right bloody daft, woman,” he says, half angry now because for the love of the gods, does he have to spell it out for her?

“I beg your pardon?” she says, affronted with her head reared back to glare up at him, eyes still shining from tears, though they burn now from a perceived insult.

“I am here because there is _nowhere_ else I would be. I would starve. I feast on every smile, on each brush of your hand. I follow you to The Wall, back to your keep, and then off to another war. I am by your side and always will be. What else would you have me say?”

It is as if time stops, she is so slow to move, to react, to do anything, and her stasis paralyzes him too as his words hang in the air, stuck between them like beads of amber to a naked winter bough. She shines. The tears, the auburn, the Tully blue, the cow’s milk of her skin, and then the glisten of her teeth and tongue when at last she opens her mouth to speak.

“If you will always be by my side,” she says slowly, as if she is trying out a new language she’s never spoken before, but maybe that’s true for the both of them, “then why were you just about to leave?”

He frowns at the ridiculous question after he’s just bared his damned soul.

“To sleep, Sansa, whatever else would I do, halfway to dawn as it is? I’ll not be going for a hunt, for fuck’s sake.”

She raises her eyebrows but there’s a smile on her face now.

“You know, for a sworn shield who gives a Queen good counsel, you are right bloody daft, man,” she says.

 _Ah,_ he thinks, and then realization hits him, and the slow, regular, beast-of-burden beat of his heart quickens, pounds and thuds like a runaway mare. And then her hand lifts, and where earlier that day she swatted his chest, now she simply rests her palm there, just so, almost a mirror of how he accidentally fondled her hours ago.

“What are you saying, Sansa?” he asks slowly.

“You know what I’m saying, Sandor.”

“Aye,” he murmurs, and finally, _finally,_ he reaches out to touch her hair, a pinch of it between thumb and forefinger, and nothing in the realm has felt so fine. “Aye, I do.”


	3. Chapter 3

Words fail them after that admission, though words would do little to serve them, anymore; words brought them to this point and now action takes their place.

It is slow at the onset, his shuffling step towards her, the lifting of her hands to cup his face and hold him near and dear, before she slides her arms up, high as she can reach to wind them round his neck and draw him down, closer closer closer. The sifting of his thick fingers through her hair, and big and hulking as he is the touch is far gentler than she would have guessed. But she would have more from him. She would have it all so long as he offer it, she would have love after a lifetime of pain and misery.

And so she kisses him. It is passing strange with his scars, and though she hasn’t been kissed much in her life she knows that the tightness on the one side of his mouth is because of his burns. Not that it much matters when he sighs and opens his mouth, when he pushes his tongue against hers in a slick slide that makes her gasp out of surprise. _That_ is a new thing, and she’s not sure she does it right when she returns the gesture, but even if she doesn’t it still doesn’t stop him from groaning, doesn’t stop his hands from grasping her by the hips, from sliding to the low of her back where he fists her dress and tugs her closer.

Tongue and teeth, the gnarl of scars, the press of his hardened manhood, the itch of wool against her skin as his hands roam her body, the way her beating heart and panting breaths between kisses have set her to sweat, all these sensations consume her. Not all are pleasurable but all are so deliciously heightened that the difference between sweet and discomfort blurs and blends into one solid truth.

Desire.

Oh, how she wants him, and judging by the way his kisses are roughening and quickening, clumsy, hungry, haphazard things that fall away from her mouth as he hunches over to kiss her ear and her neck, he wants her too. Such a lovely thing, to be wanted, to be craved, and she lets her head drop back as he kisses her throat, smiles up to the ceiling of her tent as she clings to him and lets him devour her. And then he nips her, a fleeting sharp thing that stokes her up and makes her ravenous for him.

“Sandor,” she pants.

“What,” he growls, but then he stops and draws back, forehead creased. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Far from it,” she says, letting go of his neck to slide her hands down his chest so she can tug on his cloak. “I want you to _finish_.”

“As my Queen commands,” he says without hesitation (and Sansa is sick and tired of hesitation), his deep dark voice full of relish as without another word he hauls her up in his arms.

She’s taller than him now, high as she is up here, and her hair curtains them both as she cups his face and kisses him, and he walks blindly to the bed, knocking over a stool in the process. She laughs into his mouth, swallows a hiccup that reminds her she was crying not so long ago, laughs again to think that she will never cry again, not with him here in this way. Not with love in her heart.

He lets her go when his shins hit the bed, and she slides down his body somewhat unceremoniously to the furs, kicks the pile of her clothes to the floor to make room for him. Sandor is still in his boiled leather, his daily uniform until now when she’ll have the real suit of him, the muscle and flesh for her. _Only for me,_ she thinks fiercely. She has bloody well waited long enough, and there is no way she will ever let him go now.

“Seven hells,” he mutters, struggling with the ties on one of his vambraces, a big bear in a mummer’s show wearing armor, he is so clumsy with it.

Sansa laughs. “Come, let me help,” she says, and so in this way she gets to unwrap him, the finest gift she’s ever received.

He is stunning once fully unclothed, standing there with his chest heaving, staring down at her like she is the last morsel of food left in the North. But after she takes him in – all of him, mind, and there is _one_ thing in particular that makes her eyes widen – and still he does not move to the bed, she frowns.

“What is it?” she asks, wondering if perhaps she has done something wrong. She was wedded – briefly – and bedded in The Vale, but Harry never just _stood_ there.

“I’d see you as well,” he says simply, nodding towards her body as he drops a gaze down the length of her. “All of you. Before I get distracted,” he adds with a rare but genuine grin.

Sansa’s cheeks flush, and she lets slip a giggle like a foolish girl. But she nods, lip bitten between her teeth as she sits up and reaches back for the simple ties of her dress, deftly loosens them, wriggles like a fish on the bed to slip free from the dress and the wool paths, the cotton shift beneath. When at last she’s naked and supine, staring up at him while chewing her lip, the furs a glossy itch beneath her that makes her squirm as much as his unwavering gaze, finally Sandor moves.

With a loud exhale he squats down beside the bed, his eyes a roam and wander that soon his hand follows.

“Never did I think, not once,” he says to her breasts, to her belly, to the thatch of auburn between her legs that he ghosts his palm over. “Never in all my days.”

“It’s a wonder you made it this far, if you’ve never thought,” she says with a shiver under the weight of so much worship. “Not even once,” she gasps with the arching of her back as he squeezes her thigh.

“Daft woman,” he chuckles, shaking his head before finally moving onto the bed beside her.

The mattress sinks considerably under his weight, but the furs keep the straw from poking them, from digging into her back when he finally rolls on top of her, his hipbones two faint presses into the soft flesh of her thighs once she parts them. She can feel his hard cock against the wetness of her, the long firm weight of it, and never has anticipation felt so intoxicating. Cheap sour wine be damned, _this_ is the nectar she wants to drink from for the rest of her days.

Sandor licks his palm, reaches down to stroke himself before the deed is done, and his grey eyes are hotter than a forge as he gazes at her, and his expression changes the moment hers does, the moment he pushes himself inside her.

“Oh, gods,” she whispers, all breath leaving her body as that first slow slide fills her up, a deeply satisfying stretch that she hasn’t felt in ages, that perhaps she’s never felt at all.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m no maiden, as you well know,” she says, voice changing to a purr as he draws out and pushes back in again. “Just don’t you dare stop.”

“Aye, Your Grace,” he whispers in her ear.

It makes her laugh just before he makes her moan, and it’s a mingle now between love and fucking, something wickedly fine as he thrusts and thrusts, as his muscles of his back move like the sea beneath her hands, the scratching of her nails that makes him grunt and fuck her harder. She’s never liked that vulgar word until now, until now when she finally understands the beauty of it, here beneath him, here when he has her pinned, here where he’s loving her with everything he has. But there’s something just out off reach, regardless of how well endowed he is.

“More,” she begs. “Please, Sandor. Please.”

Ecstasy, now. Slippery and the smell of leather and sweat, candle wax and the wet of her. Legs hitch up around his hips, feet press into the muscle of his buttocks, anything she can think to coax him on.

“Oh,” he says to her throat before he lifts his head to regard her, and he chuckles darkly, shakes his head as he withdraws only to push back inside her _._ Sansa gasps and digs her nails into him. “Lady Wolf, I am nowhere near finished with you, I don’t care _how_ hard you claw me.”

He is true to his word. Sansa has no notion of how much time passes, cares not a whit besides, so long as this is how they spend their hours. He flips her on her belly, makes her fist the furs, has her sit astride him though she has never done such a thing, and he gazes up at her, amused at her lack of rhythm though he is no less aroused because of it. When she complains he complies, has her on her back when finally he gives in and climaxes. His cock pulses as his seed spurts into her after one final good hard thrust and a loud groan, the shaking of his arms as he holds himself up high above her, his hair in eyes and sweat beading on his chest.

“I didn’t pleasure you, did I,” he asks her once he’s next to on his side, fondling her breasts as her skin dries.

She frowns. “Did you not hear me? Did you not see me? I was most pleased,” she replies. “Do I need to bandy about the word ‘daft’ again?”

Sandor snorts. “I heard moans and I heard my name, and I saw you writhe, aye. But I didn’t _feel_ you. You can feel it when a woman hits her peak. They don’t always, but I have felt it before.”

“You mean with your whores?”

He pauses.

“Practice runs,” he suggests, and then he grins again. “I must needs have skill when I finally lie with the Queen in the North.”

Sansa huffs and nudges his shoulder with his own.

“I would pleasure you, Sansa, if you’ll let me.”

“ _Let_ you? How in Seven Hells would you best what you just- _ohh,_ ” she gasps as he dips inside her with his fingers.

“That’s the good thing about whores,” he murmurs in her ear as he kisses her cheek, before he kisses her mouth, and by the Maiden and Mother and Crone, Sansa never before thought having a conversation about whores would ever have her so aroused. “They tell you just what to do if you pay them enough.”

His fingers are nowhere near the girth of his cock, but they do a different sort of magic, sometimes within her with a firm upward curl, and sometimes without, where he uses both the wet of her and his own seed to rub circles just beneath the thatch of her hair, and that is what makes her suddenly cry out.

“Oh gods, Sandor, please,” she half shouts, half whimpers. If she thought she was begging before, there is only ignorance to blame. Who knew she was so empty, to be this full of feeling?

“There it is,” he murmurs. “There she is.”

Her legs shake as something indefinable build up in her, something both exquisite and horrible, something that makes her want him to stop at the same time she’d kill him if he did. And then it all bubbles up and over, and she throws her head back and arches her spine, hands scrabbling at the furs for purchase, to hold on for dear life lest she burst apart and float away.

“That,” she says as she catches her breath, chest heaving, much to Sandor’s smoldering delight, judging by the way he watches, “was completely deserving of that smug look on your face.”

Sandor barks out a laugh.

“So that was a peak? Myranda once told me they were lovely, but she never said they were _that_ lovely.” Sansa turns her head to face him and is greeted by the wrapping of his arm around her shoulders, and she comes willingly as he draws her in to him. “And you feel that good every time?”

“Aye, and so will you from here on out.”

“Mm,” she hums happily, head resting on his chest where his heart still races beneath her ear. And then something returns to her memory. “You called me Lady Wolf again. That is a far cry from the other name you used to call me.”

A low rumble of a chuckle in his chest, full of rue. “You are a far cry from a little bird, anymore.”

“Fair enough,” she says with a drowsy smile, all happy pulse and throb, the ebb of fulfillment spreading into the warm envelopment of contentment. “But what shall I call you now?”

“Yours.”

 

+++

 

He is woken sometime after the sunrise, he can tell from the wan light that seeps in through the tent flap, but it is not the dawn that wakes him. It is the shudder of the earth, like it is being rent in two, an apple in the hands of a giant.

“Sandor, what _was_ that?” Sansa hisses, her head off his chest in an instant, the furs they are under shifting and letting the cold into their little nest. Her hand skates across his chest, pulling him nearer.

“No idea,” he says, half sitting up with a grunt and a sniff, elbow to the straw mattress.

There are the shouts of men, the terrified screams of horses, the commotion of wagons rattling by. Sandor flings the furs off and swiftly stands to his feet. Sansa’s bannermen do not yet know she is stripped of her title; if their men are turning tail, if their forces are abandoning their Queen in the North, he’ll have their heads. Every last one of them.

“Stay here,” he orders her with a glance down and a finger aimed her way. “I don’t want you caught up in some fray.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I am about to fucking find out,” he says, pulling a tunic over his head and shoulders before stepping into his pants.

But he is wrong, in that finding out requires him to leave her quarters, because in that moment the tent is wrenched open so sharply that the canvas tears, and he is greeted by the sight of none other than Daenerys Targaryen, her entire Queensguard, and the serving boy from last night.

“I wondered about you two yesterday,” the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms says in her ice-chip voice as her gaze drifts from Sandor, barefoot and undone, over to Sansa, still naked as a starling in her bed with the furs pulled up to her collarbone, hair a sweat-dried rumple. “I saw what was between you.”

“It is well within a Quee- a lady’s right to take a lover, if she so desires. I have broken no sovereign law,” Sansa says haughtily. “What right have _you_ to barge in here like so?”

“I’m not here to scold you like some septa,” the dragon bitch says. “Of that you can be certain.”

Sandor’s eyes fall on the boy, who like a misbehaved dog is looking at anything but His Grace and Sandor. Something flares inside him and he lunges for the lad.

“You little fucking—” he snarls, reaching out to snag the boy by his cloak.

Instantly the Queensguard swoops in, the clash and racket of armor filling the once cozy tent with chaos, and instantly Sandor is apprehended, dragged back from both the Queen and the boy, who is shaking like a leaf. There is a heavy clank, the rattle of chains, and he feels his wrists bound behind his back

“Sandor! What _is_ this about?” Sansa says, yanking on the now dirty dress that they discarded on the floor last night. “I demand answers at once!”

“I think your ‘sworn shield’ here has figured it out. Haven’t you,” Daenerys says with the curl of her upper lip as she steps into the tent.

Wind howls as it follows her, scattering Sansa’s papers and unfurling her maps. Snow whips in and stings Sandor’s eyes. He feels like he is going to be sick.

“Sandor, what is it? What’s happening?” Sansa says, voice a tremble as she tries in vain to get past the guards in order to get to him. “Get your hands off me!” she cries, yanking her wrist back as she is shackled in the same manner as Sandor.

“Leave her be!” he bellows, first to the guard and then to the Queen, who has already turned on her heel to exit the tattered tent. “It was my plot! It came from me!”

“Bring them outside,” is all the Queen says.

They are dragged outside barefoot, and he can see Sansa trembling from the cold even with two guards between them, though Sandor is nothing but numbness and a racing heart. And suddenly the cause of that tremendous quake is revealed, and his vision swims as he looks up, up, up, to see the terrible sight of an enormous black dragon.

“Oh, gods,” Sansa whimpers.

“Fuck,” Sandor says.

It is almost impossible to look away from such an incredible, horrible beast, is almost impossible to see that while he had heard commotion earlier, it was not their men fleeing from their Queen but their men fleeing the arrival of Daenerys on dragon-back.

“Sandor, I’m scared,” Sansa says.

“I know, my girl. I know,” is all he can think to say.

“People of the North,” Dany shouts as she strides through the scattered, disarrayed battle camp, “I give you your disposed Queen, Lady Sansa Stark, and her shield, Sandor Clegane.”

The dragon is a spectacle, to be true, but so is the sight of their disheveled, barefoot Queen being dragged before them in chains. Indeed the sight of a disheveled, barefoot man next to her all but screams scandal and affair, and it’s not long before there is a small crowd of knights and footmen trailing after them.

The Queen approaches what is roughly the center of the grounds and stops, turns towards them, and clasps her hands in front of her, a mockery of how Sansa stood before her only a day ago. What a different the setting and rising of the sun can bring.

“Yesterday your brave forces were defeated by those under the Targaryen banner, as you all know. You fought valiantly for the woman who called herself your Queen in the North, but you must understand that there _is_ no Queen in the North.”

There is a sweep of murmurs and mutters, the gentle swell of confusion that is muted somewhat by the unnerving presence of a huge dragon so close.

“I don’t understand,” Sansa says to Sandor, peering around the two guards. “This was all arranged peacefully yesterday. Why are we in chains? For show? For dramatics?”

“The serving boy, my girl,” Sandor says as he shakes his head. “He heard us, and apparently he saw fit to betray you.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Sansa whispers, a constant steady stream of _No_ over and over again until she runs out of air. She shudders as she breathes in, and then is silent.

“It was agreed between Lady Stark and me just yesterday that she would be stripped of her title as Queen in the North, and bestowed that of Warden of the North, just as her House has done for generations. However, it was brought to my attention, late last night, that your would-be Warden did not intend to bend the knee, but to betray me.

“You have fought the dead, you have vanquished the white walkers, and then for one girl’s selfish whims, turned around to fight me, when all I intended to do was to rule the Seven Kingdoms as _my_ House has done for generations. She would send you to war, over and over again, for her folly and her vainglory.”

The murmurs and mutters turn angry. There are jeers and protests, a few slurs thrown their way. Sandor closes his eyes. He hears Sansa begin to cry.

“Lady Stark and Lord Clegane have committed the highest act of treason against their Queen, but I know that you, good people of the North, have not. I ask that you bend the knee, and in doing so swear to me in good faith that the North will always show me loyalty. In doing so, no harm will come to you or to your families. No longer will you keep fighting and keep dying. I offer you peace where your Lady Stark only offered you endless battle. Will you choose peace? Or will you choose war?”

Sansa sobs.

Sandor opens his eyes at last.

Not a single man remains standing. His heart sinks.

“Sansa,” he says suddenly, an idea springing forth like a weed from the mud of his thoughts. “Sansa, you must bend the knee and beg her for forgiveness. She’ll have to forgive you this to show mercy. She’d be a fool to rule through fear like the Mad King,” he hisses.

“You speak of your Queen’s father that way?” one of the guards says.

“You are from Essos, what do you know of it?” Sandor snaps.

“Your Grace!” Sansa shouts.

Daenerys turns to them. Stands on a low snow-covered barrow, a strange sort of carrion bird all in black, silver hair a whip in the wind where it is not plaited in place. Silently she awaits.

“Your Grace, please forgive me my foolish thoughts. It was nothing- nothing more th-than jealousy,” she says, fast on her feet, teeth chattering in the cold. “I wish to bend the knee and honor the terms of our parlay.”

The Queen tilts her head as she regards them.

“Do you swear it? Before the old gods and the new?”

“Yes, we both of us swear it, Your Grace. As Warden I will swear eternal fealty to you from all the Houses in the North.”

“Unchain them,” she says, and then her features soften and she unclasps her hands, gestures them forward.

The moment their shackles are off they come to one another, but where he would love to embrace her, it would not do to give people another spectacle. Where he normally would not give a shit what others think, now is no time for ignoring protocol. She must save face now, and she seems to know it because instead of throwing herself into his arms, she merely wipes away her tears and tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow as ladies do. Her fingers are like ice; he can feel it through his thin tunic.

“Sansa, you’re freezing,” he whispers.

“I feel nothing, just relief to touch you again,” she says through her tears that she tries valiantly to dash away.

Her once loyal men back away from her, frowning in suspicion, some glaring, some shaking their heads. One man spits at their feet.

“I can fix this,” Sansa murmurs to herself. “I can fix this.”

“And I will help you.”

They stop a respectable distance from the Queen, who nods her approval at their decision.

“Swear your loyalty, Lady Stark of Winterfell. Swear your loyalty now to House Targaryen and to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms,” she says.

“I, Lady Stark of Winterfell, and House Stark of the North, do swear my love and loyalty to House Targaryen and to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms,” Sansa says, sinking to her knee in the snow. Her ivory shift all but disappears against the cold white stuff, but her hair is a wind-whipped flag of flame as she bows her head.

“And you, Sandor Clegane?”

“Aye, me too,” he gruffs as he looks from Sansa to the diminutive Queen, dropping to one knee beside Sansa, and he inclines his head. “I swear my love and loyalty to House Targaryen and to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Very well,” Daenerys says, voice rising as she then addresses the crowd. “Let it be known that House Targaryen is not always fire and blood. I show mercy to those who show loyalty. Please rise,” she shouts to the scatter of beleaguered Northern bannermen.

“Here, my lady,” Sandor says, holding out his hand, and he is so cold at this point it barely registers just how freezing hers is when she slips it into his.

“No, not you two,” Daenerys says before walking away. “I show mercy to those who show loyalty. But treason will _never_ get my mercy, will always get fire and blood, and it would do the North _very_ well to remember that.”

There is a sick roil and slosh in Sandor’s belly; he always knew he would die on a battlefield, has come close more times than he can count. But not Sansa. Never Sansa. She was the little bird who flew away, who turned into the wolf that lead a pack against dragons. Tears prick his eyes.

“Sandor, what’s- what’s happening,” she murmurs as she cowers against him.

“It doesn’t matter, my girl, my queen, my love,” he says, lifting an arm to hold her, press her, crush her to him. He closes his eyes so that his last sensory experiences in this life will only be her.

“Drogon,” Daenerys says, voice disembodied somewhere far away.

The great hulking beast screeches, and now he knows that what maimed him as a boy will kill him as a man, and he would quake and scream and try to flee, were it not for the woman clinging to him now. 

“Oh gods, Sandor, the dragon fire,” Sansa sobs.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers rapid-fire quick, his arms around her, nose in her hair. He can still smell last night’s sweat and it is the sweetest flower, the finest perfume. “I’ve finally got you, and I’ll be ever at your side.”

“We didn’t have enough time,” she says with a sniff, a sigh, a moan. “We hardly had any time at all.”

“Dracarys,” comes the cold and calculated command.

Fingers scramble up his back and into his hair at the sound of the dragon sucking in a breath, instant heat they can feel as the end begins, the sound of the rush of fire so hot that Sandor knows it will be over in an instant, and thank the Stranger for that.

“It’s still a lifetime, love.”

And then the world sears and explodes, and then there is nothing to worry about, anymore.


	4. Epilogue

“Oooh, that Rickon has turned into an absolute hellion! You’d think he were still a feral little thing like he was when he was 10 and three, but now a man of nearly 20 and _still_ a hell cat,” Tilly the maid says as she and Meg clear the dishes from Winterfell’s great hall.

“Well what do you expect, with Lady Arya has his only role model? Her being still so bitter at how Queen Daenerys wronged her sister. It’s all she can do to keep Lord Rickon from marching south to kill her. Thank the old gods that Lord Bran woke from his stupor to tell Rickon that history will only repeat itself where Starks and Targaryens are concerned.”

“It’s still no bloody excuse to slap my arse every time he walks past me.”

“Truth to that, Till, truth to that indeed,” Meg says as she sops up spilled ale from the dais table. “As much as there is in the fact that you blush and giggle like a tavern wench whenever he does it.”

Both girls burst out laughing.

It’s not so cold these days anymore and so the windows to the great hall have been thrown open to air out the must and the dust, and there is occasional birdsong that filters into the massive room, tinkling little things that soon fade into the hustle and bustle as the two girls work to clean up the morning meal.

But then Meg pauses, head cocked to the side.

“Tilly, I say, do you hear that?” 

“Hear what? You cleaning? Cause all _that_ racket’s stopped now that you’re just standing there.”

“No, stop for a bloody moment and listen. D’you hear it? It sounds like- it sounds like- well, to be true, it sounds like laughter.”

Both girls stop their work, staring at each other from either end of the table.

There is a burbling liquid sound, like water being poured into a glass, like pewter on heavy wood grain. For all in the world it sounds like dinner service. And then-

_Lady Wolf, may I pour you another?_

Meg’s blood runs cold and while she wants nothing more to run, she is so terrified she is rooted to the spot. Indeed, Tilly looks to be the same way, standing on the other side, knuckles white as she grips the back of a chair.

_Why of course, my lord, you may pour me another._

The burble again and the clinking of goblets. The tinkling sound of laughter. The rough gruff boom of a man’s churlish chuckle.

Tilly screams, drops her rag, and runs to the big doors leading out to the yard.

But Meg stays, inexplicable tears running down her dirty face, because there is something to the quality of what she hears, something sweet and rare, like the one time her father brought home an orange. Tender and irreverent, an eternal laugh in the face of hardship, something she knows well.

_Do you love me, my lord?_

Meg sobs in earnest now, yet for some ridiculous reason she’s smiling through them, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, because she knows the answer, and it both breaks her heart and makes it sing.

_Aye, my lady, my queen. Always and forever._


End file.
